Cisco Moves to Unify Telepresence

Companies that use telepresence technology to communicate with their customers, partners, and employees on multiple communications platforms will find life a bit easier with Cisco's new Telepresence Interoperability Protocol (TIP). Enterprise Networking Planet breaks down what every IT administrator wrestling with incompatible real-time communications and collaboration applications needs to know.

Ever tried having a telepresence meeting with a user that has a different system that yours? It's not easy. That could be about to change thanks to a new telepresence interoperability initiative from networking giant Cisco.

The Cisco Telepresence Interoperability Protocol (TIP) effort is a free protocol licensed by Cisco, that enables multi-vendor conferencing. Initial licensees include LifeSize, RADVISION and Tandberg. LifeSize was recently acquired by Logitech for $405 million and Tandberg is in the process of being acquired by Cisco for $3.4 billion. While TIP is not an open standard itself, it builds on existing standards to enable interoperability.

"The Telepresence Interoperability Protocol builds on SIP and is used between media endpoints to signal information related to the various media streams involved in an immersive Cisco TelePresence call," Cisco spokesperson Jacqueline Roy told InternetNews.com. "With open standards such as SIP, were able to deliver interoperability with standard and HD video conferencing systems and other collaboration applications while preserving the experience."

While TIP itself is not an industry standard, Cisco overall is active in standard bodies and today's TIP announcement is an early step for interoperability standards in telepresence.